Where the Marathon Matters

Japan's long-running tradition

The very nature of long-distance running resonates with the Japanese spirit. Endurance, perseverance, and the will to never-give-up-no-matter-how-damn-uncomfortable-it-gets are core Japanese values. A popular proverb is Nana-korobi, ya-oki.

(Fall down seven times, get up eight times.) One of the highest compliments that can be paid to an athlete is to say that he or has makenki, roughly translated as "the spirit not to lose."

Year after year, this spirit is harnessed in developing an unending line of marathoners. In the urban settings of Kyoto and Tokyo, along the rice fields of Sakura in Chiba prefecture, in the oceanside town of Nobeoka on the southern island of Kyushu, and in dozens of other towns and cities across the country, the world's most elaborate system of corporate support for distance running continues with a regularity expected of military or agricultural endeavors.

One such site is the city of Okayama, halfway between Osaka and Hiroshima. Each morning, the women of Tenmaya department store's elite team jog 2 kilometers from their company dormitory to their daily meeting spot in Okayama Sports Park. The athletes form a large circle with head coach Yutaka Taketomi and his staff, then go through a series of calisthenics and stretching, a team member calling out the rhythm, "Ichi-ni-san-shi" (One-two-three-four.) The group then draws in around Taketomi-san as he tells them of the day's training and makes note of any upcoming competitions or training camps. A moment later he quietly sends them off for a 50-minute run. The women, most clad in their pink and black team colors, are soon on the outskirts of Okayama, heading along hilly countryside roads and riverside bike paths. There is almost no chitchat during the run, as the pace steadily cranks up from 7 minutes to 6:15.

After the run, each athlete will in turn go up to Taketomi-san or to younger coach Futoshi Shinohara for brief feedback about her training and condition. With a short bow, the women run back to their dorm for a quick shower and breakfast, and then head into the main branch of Tenmaya for half a day's work. In the afternoon, they will gather again for the day's main workout. Several times each year the athletes will get a leave from their work duties to make intensive training camps called gasshuku.

Taketomi-san has done a remarkable job. Although he does not recruit the top high school athletes, he has already coached four women to sub-2:25 efforts, two more than in U.S. history. His athletes have won marathons at Tokyo, Osaka, Berlin, and Vienna, among others. More importantly from the corporate sponsor's view, they have placed women on Japan's world championship and Olympic marathon teams, the pinnacle of Japanese track and field.

Once recruited, the women on the Tenmaya team are given every opportunity to reach their potential. Monthly salaries? Check. Housing? Check. Meals? Check. A fully paid staff of coaches, nutritionists, and physical therapists? Check. The entire tab for gasshuku camps in Japan, Albuquerque, Boulder, or China's Kunming? Check. The athletes' job is simply to run. It is an ideal set-up, allowing for the time, patience, and training requisite to develop world-class marathoners.

Across the archipelago, some 55 men's teams and 30 women's teams operate with systems similar to that of Tenmaya. Unlike the near-universal sponsorship dependence in America on Nike, ASICS, and the other shoe companies, the Japanese jitsugyodan (corporate team) sponsorship spans the economic spectrum, comprising automakers (Honda, Toyota, Suzuki), insurance companies (Daiichi Life, Mitsui Sumitomo), cosmetics makers (Shiseido, Kanebo), department stores, banks, and even a lingerie maker (Wacoal). Keith and Kevin Hanson's deal with Saturn is giving us our first glimpse of the possibilities in the U.S., and–just as it has been a boost to professional cycling teams here–it very much seems a model for the future of American distance running.

The Fans: Marathoners as Icons

Chat with your taxi driver or sushi chef on a night out in most Japanese cities and it becomes apparent that Yuko Arimori, Naoko Takahashi, and Mizuki Noguchi are national icons even among the sedentary. Likewise, the employees of the corporate sponsors of distance teams are as fervent as fans of the Beautiful Game. The stands at a national ekiden relay championship are a rainbow of corporate colors and logos, as employees garbed in their company hues give raucous support to their runners.

Not only do people run in Japan–156,000 Japanese runners applied on-line this summer for the second edition of the revamped Tokyo Marathon, while Runners, the country's largest running magazine, and field equipment maker Nishi Sports separately manage some 500 races annually in a country the size of Montana–they love to watch the sport at the elite level. There is no disconnect as there is in America, whereby those who participate in running events show little interest in also watching it done at a high level. The Japanese situation is more akin to golf in U.S., where Joe Duffer will go out on a spring morning and shoot 93 on his local course, then come back home in the afternoon and watch five hours of Augusta coverage.

In Japan, live broadcasts of marathons and ekiden events, which carry all the expert analysis and technical quality given the NFL here at home, garner staggering numbers. While U.S. marathon broadcasts rarely creep above 1 percent ratings, in Japan a 10 percent rating for a major ekiden or marathon would be a disappointment; certain athletes and events can bring Super Bowl-like 40-plus percent ratings.

As is readily apparent from international road race and marathon results, though, Japan's focus is intensely internal. Aside from the string of women's victories in Berlin, their world-class athletes are a virtual non-entity on the global circuit. The only international titles and podiums that matter to the corporate sponsors are the Olympics and world championships. Even the global brands such as Shiseido, Honda, Toyota, or Konica Minolta seem to take only passing interest in the accomplishments of their athletes outside of Japan. Kanebo's head coach, Kunimitsu Itoh says only half-jokingly, "Maybe 80 percent of the teams here in Japan are only thinking about the ekiden."